Well, the holidays are officially over, and if you’re like me, you’ve piled on a few pounds enjoying all the decadent eats! Here’s the good news: those dairy products you work so hard to help produce could actually be the key to taking off those holiday pounds!
Calcium is good for your bones and your blood pressure, and there is growing evidence that it could help a little with weight control, especially for women.
Some of the latest evidence comes from a retrospective study of nearly 11,000 middle-aged men and women conducted at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Women who got 500 milligrams or more of calcium daily–equal to drinking about two cups of skim milk –gained about 10 pounds over a decade. Compare that to the more than 15 pounds gained by women who consumed less calcium daily.
While calories consumed, exercise and metabolism account for 97 percent of the fluctuations in body weight, calcium “explains about a three percent variability of body weight in U.S. adults,” says Robert P. Heaney, who studies the effects of calcium at Creighton University in Nebraska. “Three percent isn’t bad.